The Bitter End to Bitter Work
by LoonRider
Summary: The last Grongi is dead, but Godai falls beside him in blood. Ichijo and the others cope after the immediate end of the Grongi War. (Rated for violence mentions, blood/injuries)


**Hi hello once again please don't hurt me. Told you Kuuga fic was incoming! I just love this cinematic masterpiece of a show. Bits of this were inspired by flashbacks of the same scene from EstelRaca's fic "After the End."**

Spoilers: Ending. This takes place immediately after the last shot in episode 48.

Content warnning: Blood, serious injuries

#

" _Godai!_ "

The echoes of his own scream came back to him on the wind. He wasted another heartbeat in shock, in horror. And then he ran, stumbling on legs numb from cold and aching from the climb. He fell once, twice, hard enough to give back some sensation in the limbs even if it was only pain. It felt like forever before he reached the battle site, and his panting breath caught in his throat. There was blood _everywhere_ , spattered in terrible beauty across the canvas of snow. With this much blood, he couldn't even bring himself to look at Godai. Wasn't brave enough yet to see the extent of the damage, the injuries...

That left his eyes with nowhere to go but over to Zerogou, Daguva... the monster responsible for unleashing hell. It was hard to reconcile the creature he'd first seen in a grainy video a year ago, and last seen burning Godai and countless civilians all while laughing, with the young man now lying dead in the snow, blood covering his too-white clothes. But they were the same. This was the thing responsible for raising the Unidentified Lifeforms, for slaughtering more people than he could count, for forcing Godai to take on more responsibility and pain than anyone should ever be expected to.

Ichijo didn't realize he'd drawn his gun until he felt the recoil of the first shot, saw the little explosions of the nerve-breaker bullet inside Daguva's chest. A bullet that would have been for Godai, if he'd lost control, if he wasn't lying unconscious or worse just metres away...

He fired again, and again, and again. Emptied his gun, reloaded, emptied it again. He felt a scream building in his throat, anger and hatred and fear. He swallowed it. If he let it out, he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop. He reloaded his gun one more time, put yet more bullets into Daguva's torso, and the last one into his head. No way was this thing getting up to cause more death, more misery.

He realized he was hyperventilating, almost choking on the frigid air, and forced himself to focus on his breathing, slow it down to something regular. Once he had it under control, he holstered his weapon. Finally, he looked at Godai, and his heart jumped into his throat, his anger swept aside by a renewed wave of fear. There was so much blood around him that Ichijo would have sworn he was dead if not for the little voice of hope in the back of his mind, reminding him that Godai wasn't the same as others, wouldn't die from things that would kill others.

But this was worse than any injuries he'd seen Godai suffer before.

At the man's side before he even realized he'd moved, Ichijo knelt, carefully lifting Godai's upper body to hold closer to his own. Some snow trickled off with the changed position, but most of it clung, half-melted, to wet patches of clothing where Godai's blood had soaked through, continued to soak through to stain the ground. Ichijo's jaw clenched, one hand reaching to shake a bloody shoulder. "Godai Yuusuke...! Godai!" No response. Of course, if all the gunfire hadn't roused him, Godai wasn't going to react to just Ichijo's voice.

He reached to touch Godai's cheek, and please let that blood from his mouth _just_ be from his mouth and not some internal damage Ichijo couldn't see. Under the stiff, already-freezing blood, Godai's skin was cold, his breathing infrequent and forming only the tiniest clouds of mist in the chill air. Superhuman or not, he was in bad shape. Ichijo had to do something.

He remembered his phone and fumbled for it, the blood on his hand slick and conspiring with the bone-chilling wind to rob him of dexterity. Finally he grasped the device and pulled it out to see the screen: 20 missed calls. No surprise, since he hadn't told anyone where he was going after calling in the location of Daguva's last victims.

Didn't matter. He hit the speed-dial for the number he needed, pressing the phone as close to his ear as possible and hoping the wind wouldn't drown anything out. One ring, two rings, three, what the hell was taking so— "Dispatch. This is Sasayama." Finally!

"Sasayama, it's Ichijo." He had to shout to hear himself over the wind, though the snowfall was starting to slow.

Any concern he'd had about not being able to hear or be heard vanished when her response came, angry and worried. "Ichijo!? Where are you!? We found Zerogou's latest victims but you—"

"I'm at Mount Kurogatake," he interrupted before she could reprimand him, and kept going to answer her questions before she could ask them. "Zerogou chose it as the final battleground. He's dead, but Godai..." He looked at the bleeding man in his arms, tried to think of a word to fully describe his condition, and gave up after only a second. "He's hurt. He needs help."

A moment's pause as she processed the information. "I'll send a Doctor Helicopter right away, and Sugita and Sakurai will head to Kurogatake by road."

"Alright. Tell the hospital to make sure Tsubaki's on the helicopter." They couldn't risk an unknown doctor who didn't know about the Amadam. He hesitated, looking around at the lingering snowstorm. Had to give some kind of landmark... He sighed. "And tell them... tell them to have their pilots look for the blood on the snow."

"... Okay." She was worried. He could hear it, but he couldn't reassure her. He was barely keeping a grip himself.

"Thank you, Sasayama." He hung up after her acknowledgement, returning the phone to his pocket and trying to ignore the blood that had transferred to it from his hand. Both his arms resumed supporting Godai, his eyes going back to the other man's face. "Help's coming. Just hold on."

There was nothing to do but look at Godai, and the more Ichijo did, the more he worried. There was still blood coming from his mouth, dribbling in little streams with each shallow breath, the only other movement being small, barely perceptible shivers. Ichijo reached out to lift Godai's right hand off the snow, holding it with his own over Godai's stomach while he tucked the left hand to the side, almost between the two of them. The skin over Godai's knuckles was open and bleeding, burst from the force of his own punches. Ichijo's fingers moved to the inside of Godai's wrist: the pulse was slow, but he had no way of knowing if that was a consequence of the injuries or a deliberate effort by the Amadam to reduce blood loss.

The Amadam. It should have been working to heal Godai, so why was he still bleeding, even from the minor wounds on his hands? Ichijo let go of Godai's hand in order to lift his shirt and jacket, just far enough to see, and sucked in a sharp breath. Across Godai's stomach, over the area where the Arcle rested, was a dark, ugly bruise, with the worst of it at the centre, where the Amadam itself was. He pulled the fabric back down with a shaking hand. The Amadam had been damaged before, hadn't fully recovered before the fight, but there'd been no sign of the damage on Godai's skin that he knew of. Of course, it could just be from the force of the blows to that area, another entry on Godai's long list of injuries.

Or it could be a sign of how badly damaged the Amadam was, and how much its ability to heal Godai was reduced by the need to repair itself. Ichijo swallowed, trying to calm his fear with little success. He reached out to take Godai's hand again, to stop his own from shaking, to help Godai feel like he wasn't alone, to help himself feel like he was doing _something_ , not just sitting there watching one of the most important people in his life bleed to death.

He was a cop, he'd been trained in first aid, but all that meant was he had the training to know that Godai's injuries were way beyond his ability to help. He couldn't even see the worst of the wounds, and again he silently begged whoever was listening that there wasn't fatal internal bleeding, that the Amadam wasn't too badly damaged to save its host.

"Please," he whispered, going from begging no one to begging Godai, holding him tighter, squeezing his hand though always remembering the injuries there. "Please, Godai. Just hold on."

—

It felt like eternity before the helicopter arrived. The snow had stopped and the wind had eased, so Ichijo clearly heard it even before he looked up and watched it rise over the ridge he himself had climbed. It swung into position, and Ichijo put his body over Godai's, shielding him from the blast of wind and snow kicked up as it landed. The rotors slowed, and he pulled back to see the door swing open, Tsubaki leaping out and rushing across the snow; behind him came a nurse and one of the pilots, carrying a stretcher between them.

Tsubaki reached him first and crouched, looking at Godai first and then up at Ichijo. He didn't have to ask for the detective to know the answers he needed. "The Amadam's been damaged, worse than before. I don't know the full extent of his injuries, but he's lost a lot of blood, and he's been unresponsive since I reached him."

Before Tsubaki could answer, the nurse and pilot caught up, lowering the stretcher to the ground. Tsubaki moved to Godai's legs and the nurse took Godai's shoulders off Ichijo's arms so they could quickly, gently transfer the man to the stretcher. It was surprisingly hard to let go of Godai's hand, even harder to let him be pulled away onto the stretcher, but Tsubaki was the only one who could help, so Ichijo forced himself steady, focused on standing on legs even colder than before. He watched Tsubaki check Godai's eyes, pulse, breathing, and then rise and look at the other two. "Get him to the chopper." As they lifted Godai and moved to obey, Tsubaki turned to glance at Ichijo and froze, expression going from concentration and worry to just plain worry, his eyes wide.

For a moment, Ichijo was confused. Then he followed Tsubaki's gaze and looked down at himself, and he had to focus to keep his legs under him. The entire front of his coat, part of each sleeve, and even most of his pantlegs, were all covered in blood. He hadn't even noticed. How had he not noticed?

He swallowed, inhaled, found his voice as he looked back at Tsubaki. "It's his. I'm fine." He watched his friend's eyes narrow, trying to decide if he was telling the truth or not, but they didn't have time for this. _Godai_ didn't have time for this. He straightened, forced his voice steady. "I'm not hurt, Tsubaki. Take care of Godai."

That seemed to satisfy him, and Tsubaki nodded, turning to jog back to the helicopter and climb inside. Ichijo saw him begin cutting off Godai's blood-soaked jacket before the door was pulled closed and the rotors started up again. He shielded his face from the wind, watching until it took off and was well on its way back toward Tokyo.

Godai was in the best place he could be for the moment. Now what?

Down. He had to get down the mountain to where they'd left the motorcycles. Though he didn't have a plan for how to get both machines back to the city, because he'd refused to even consider that only one person would be making that return trip.

He was shaking. He clenched his fists, tensed every muscle to stop the tremors. When that started to hurt, he focused on breathing, tried to ignore the taste and smell of blood that came with every inhale.

Eventually, as in control as he was going to get, he sighed out the last of his deep breaths and headed back towards the ridge, away from the blood. He knew Daguva's body would have to be collected, but that could wait. Wait until he wasn't the one who would have to do it, because he couldn't stand even the thought of touching the monster that had done that to Godai.

—

Getting down was faster than getting up, even if it sometimes took all his concentration to keep from stumbling down the steeper inclines. That was better, anyway. It gave him something to occupy his otherwise scattered mind. By the time he got down to the motorcycles, a car was pulling up behind them on the road, a few metres back from the two smaller vehicles. Sugita and Sakurai got out, doors slamming shut as they crossed the distance just as Ichijo stopped to lean one hand on Beatchaser's side.

"Ichijo!" A second after he spoke, Sugita's eyes went to the blood on Ichijo's clothes, the worry on his face mirrored by Sakurai. "Are you okay?"

He nodded, resisted the impulse to look down. "Yeah, it's not mine." That didn't completely erase the worry on their faces, and Sakurai looked over his shoulder, toward where the helicopter had gone. Ichijo knew he didn't have to tell them whose blood it was. Instead, he pointed back where he'd came. "Zerogou's body is beyond that ridge. It needs to be retrieved for autopsy."

Sakurai's eyes followed the gesture, and he nodded. "I'll take care of it." He jogged back to the car, sliding into the passenger side to grab the radio.

Ichijo looked back at his other comrade and found a look of hesitant relief on the man's face. He didn't understand why until Sugita spoke. "So it's finally over?"

Over. The word hit him like cold water. Daguva had been the last one. With him dead, the war was done. The killing was over. There would still be work to do, of course: tying up loose ends and organizing research and reports for storage and eventually sorting the task force members back into their original divisions and waiting to see if Godai would recover or if he'd become the war's final casualty.

He didn't want that last thought, and he pushed it out of his mind just in time to realize Sugita was watching him, worried again, waiting for an answer. Inhaling, Ichijo managed what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Yeah, I guess it is."

Sakurai rejoined them. "They're sending someone to recover the body for the morning." When they acknowledged the news, he glanced down at the motorcycles. "What are we going to do about these?"

Ichijo looked down at Beatchaser, his hand still resting on the cold metal of its side. He frowned, looked back at the others. "Can either of you ride? We can't leave the TCRS out here."

To his slight surprise, it was Sugita who nodded. "I've kept my license up to date for it. Can't do anything fancy, but I can get it back to the research division." He fished car keys from his pocket and tossed them to Sakurai.

Ichijo nodded, hand moving from the bike itself to Godai's helmet. Picking it up, he tucked it under one arm and looked back at Sugita. "You can use mine. It should fit."

Lifting the helmet, Sugita paused to eye him. "You going to the hospital?"

He hesitated, helmet halfway to his head. "Yeah. I'll see you both at headquarters later."

Not waiting for their reply, Ichijo slid the helmet on and swung his leg over Beatchaser. Kicking the motorcycle to life, he wheeled it in a tight circle and gunned the throttle back the way he'd come.

—

He stopped only to change his clothes and wash the blood from his skin, throwing the soiled garments away before continuing to the hospital.

Tsubaki was waiting for him in the hallway outside the ICU. "You look like hell."

The gentle jibe barely dented the tension running through Ichijo's entire body. "How is he?"

His old friend's face softened, his eyes full of concern that was as much a friend's as it was a doctor's. "Stable. We gave him a transfusion... couldn't _not_ , with how much blood he'd lost. It seems to be helping, but..."

Ichijo let three seconds go by before he narrowed his eyes. "What is it?"

Another two seconds passed, and then Tsubaki sighed, scratched the back of his neck. "Come with me."

He led Ichijo to the exam room, where he unlocked a drawer and pulled out the large envelope Ichijo recognized as being for x-ray images. When Tsubaki pulled out the pictures and hung them on the lightbox, it was all Ichijo could do not to gasp. "Is that..."

Tsubaki nodded, grim. One hand reached out to gesture to the centre of the abdominal x-ray, where Ichijo recognized the distinct circle of the Amadam... except it wasn't a distinct circle. Most of it was there, but the area that indicated the stone was fractured, with smaller fragments of it outside the circle. "Whatever damage Zerogou did seems to have fractured it. These shards don't seem to be floating loose in the abdomen, rather staying close to the main body of the Amadam, but..." He leaned back, mouth drawn into a thin line.

He didn't have to finish the sentence. Shards of anything inside a person posed risks... but at the same time... "Removing them could hurt him more, right?"

"That's what I'm worried about... actually, I don't even want to try. Disturbing the stone with it and Godai in the state they're in... it could impede its ability to heal him."

Ichijo sank into the chair opposite his friend, heaved a sigh. "Any idea how long before he wakes up...?"

A sigh. "This is the worst state I've ever seen him in, Ichijo. He's come back from things that would've killed a normal person... hell, he's come back from _being_ killed, but this..." He shook his head. "I just don't know. Could be days, could be weeks... could be..." _Never_ wasn't said, but hung in the air between them like a phantom. Ichijo swallowed, Tsubaki looked at him in silent apology. "I'm doing what I can... but I think interfering too much could hurt more than help. It's mostly up to Godai and the Amadam now."

He was frustrated, Ichijo realized. To be a doctor, to have taken an oath to preserve and heal, and to have to sit by and watch as a patient and friend teetered on the brink... it had to be hell. He reached out, clasped Tsubaki's shoulder, tried his best to smile. "He hasn't let us down yet."

Tsubaki dredged up a smile that probably looked about as good as Ichijo's. "No, he hasn't."

Ichijo let go and leaned back again, brought his hands up to run down his face. Godai had never let them down. He had to trust him.

#

This. Took. Forever. I am so sorry.


End file.
